The Burglary at Whistlefield
When Sir Clinton came down to breakfast on the following morning,
Wendover thought that he looked tired and worried, though he was doing
his best to show his normal composure.
“You look as if you’d been up all night, Clinton; and yet you cleared
me off to bed fairly early.”
The Chief Constable forced a smile, but it was obvious that he had
something on his mind which was troubling him.
“Not _all_ night,” he said, qualifying Wendover’s suggestion by a
slight emphasis. “But I’ve certainly lost a good deal of sleep over
this Whistlefield business.”
“I can’t see what you’ve got to worry about just now,” his host
retorted. “Until one gets more evidence than we have just now, there’s
nothing that can be done, so far as I can see. You practically
admitted as much yourself, last night.”
“Last night and this morning are two different things,” Sir Clinton
pointed out, rather gloomily. “A lot may happen in six hours.”
“Well, if they have happened, they have happened; and you couldn’t
have prevented them happening.”
“That sounds like a truism,” the Chief Constable commented, “and I
wish it were one. But it isn’t.”
He seemed almost on the verge of a confidence at last; but to
Wendover’s disappointment he contented himself with adding:
“I’ve taken a big risk in this affair, Squire; and if the game goes
against me, I’d never be able to forgive myself. It’s as serious as
that.”
From his tone, it was evident that he was gravely perturbed; and
Wendover could find nothing to say which seemed likely to be helpful.
In a moment or two, Sir Clinton broke the silence.
“They’re on the ’phone at Whistlefield, aren’t they?”
“Yes. Are you expecting a message?”
“One never can tell,” was all that Sir Clinton would vouchsafe. “Can
you hear your telephone bell from this room?”
“Oh, yes, the machine’s just down the passage from here, as it
happens.”
Sir Clinton went on with his breakfast; but Wendover could see that he
was listening for the ringing of the bell. Just as they had finished,
it rang sharply.
“I’ll go,” said Sir Clinton. “It’s almost certain to be Whistlefield
ringing up.”
As he rose from the table Wendover could see a look of acute anxiety
on his face. He left the door open as he went out, and the sound of
his voice at the telephone came back into the room.
“Driffield speaking . . . Did you say burglar or burglars? . . . All
right, don’t bother to tell me any more now. I’m coming across at
once. Good-bye.”
Sir Clinton came back to Wendover. The anxiety on his face was as
deeply marked as ever; but the prospect of action seemed to have
raised his spirits slightly.
“Come on, Wendover. Get the car out, will you? There’s been a burglary
at Whistlefield last night. I’ll need to go across and look into the
affair.”
When they reached Whistlefield, they were shown into the study where
they found Ernest Shandon and Stenness waiting for them.
“Now you might give me the whole story, Mr. Shandon,” Sir Clinton
requested as soon as he had greeted the two. “It may be a case where
time means a good deal; and we want to get our hands on these fellows
at once, if we can.”
Ernest pulled out his cigarette-case. He seemed to be in a very
nervous condition.
“D’you mind if I smoke?” he demanded, perfunctorily. “It soothes one,
I always think; gives you a better chance of putting things calmly and
not getting mixed up in your story.”
He peered thoughtfully into his case for a second or two before he
could make up his mind which cigarette to take; but at last he found
one to his mind and set it alight. Wendover fidgeted slightly, but Sir
Clinton evidently recognised the uselessness of trying to hasten
Ernest in his operations.
“There’s been a burglary here last night,” he announced at last. “Or
rather, when I say last night, I really mean this morning because it
was a good deal after midnight when it happened.”
“Can you give me the exact time?” Sir Clinton asked.
Ernest looked at him owlishly, reflected for a moment or two, and then
shook his head in a care-worn fashion.
“No, I don’t think so. I didn’t look at the clock, you know. It was
after midnight, that’s all I can remember.”
“Begin at the beginning, then, Mr. Shandon, and give us all the
details you can. Anything may turn out to be useful for all we can
tell.”
“I usually go to bed quite early,” Ernest began, “but last night,
after you went away, I thought I would have another look over Roger’s
papers. You interrupted me, you remember,” he said, as though in
explanation of his activity. “I got quite interested in some of them.
Roger had so many irons in the fire. I hadn’t realised before what an
amount of energy he must have had. You’ve no idea of the amount of
things he was mixed up in.”
“Yes?” said Sir Clinton, trying to hasten the slow progress of the
narrative.
“Such an amount of things,” Ernest went on. “It took me all my time to
make head or tail of the papers I looked at. I must have been hours
and hours, turning them over and reading bits here and there—files of
correspondence and that sort of thing. His cheque-book stubs were
there, too, and I looked at them. I’d no idea so much cash passed
through his hands, no idea at all. By the way, I noticed something
funny about his last cheque-book. I’ll tell you about that again,
though. It was rum, I thought; but I’d better be getting on with the
story.”
Sir Clinton nodded patiently and waited for more.
“I’d just been looking over the cheque-book when I heard a noise,”
Ernest pursued. “Of course, in an old house like this one often hears
sounds at night, furniture cracking and doors rattling, and all that
sort of thing; so I didn’t pay any attention to it at the time. It was
only afterwards that I remembered I’d heard it; and perhaps it had
nothing to do with the burglary at all. I just mention it, because you
said I was to give you all the details I could, you know.”
“What sort of sound was it?” Sir Clinton asked.
Ernest looked bewildered.
“What sort of sound was it?” he repeated. “Oh, a noise, you know.
A . . . a . . .” he seemed to find the English language too limited.
“It was a sound, you understand.”
“A voice?” suggested Sir Clinton.
“No, not a voice. A sound, just like a snick or a rap or something of
that sort, if you see what I mean.”
“And then?”
“Oh, I paid no attention to it. In a house like this one often hears
queer noises at night. It didn’t really draw my attention. I was
interested in this thing about the cheque-book. So I didn’t trouble
about the sound.”
Wendover was surprised at Sir Clinton’s patience, for no sign of
boredom appeared on his face. In fact, he seemed keenly interested.
“The next thing I remember,” Ernest continued, “was feeling sleepy. I
put away the papers, put them all back in the safe again and locked it
up. Then I thought I’d go to bed. I always go out for a breath of
fresh air before I go to my room at night—if it isn’t raining—so I
went to the window and looked out. It was quite dry; so I made up my
mind to go for my usual stroll. I don’t go far, you know, just up and
down a little near the house. It seems to me that a breath of fresh
air clears your lungs and makes you sleep better after you’ve had it.
I’m a great believer in fresh air. I hate sitting in a stuffy
room—must have the windows open always.”
“So you went out?”
“Yes. I put on a light overcoat and a cap and I opened the front door.
It was locked when I found it—I suppose that’s important?”
Sir Clinton made no audible comment.
“I went out into the garden and strolled round the house. That took me
under the window of the room where Neville—my brother—had been
sleeping during his stay here. And, d’you know? I found a ladder
sticking up against the wall there and resting against Neville’s
window-sill. And when I looked up, there was the window open!”
Sir Clinton interrupted him.
“Was there a light in the room?”
Ernest blinked hopelessly for a moment or two.
“Was there a light? There may have been. Did I say anything about a
light to you, Stenness, when I waked you up? No? Well, I don’t think
there was a light. There may have been, but now I come to think of it
I don’t remember seeing a light. No, I’m almost sure the electric
light wasn’t on in the room. I’d have noticed that. I’d have seen that
at once. No, there was no light.”
Wendover intervened with a suggestion.
“Perhaps the burglars heard you coming and switched off.”
Sir Clinton had evidently heard all he wished to know about the light.
“And what happened next, Mr. Shandon?”
“When I came to the bottom of the ladder, I said to myself:
‘Burglars’. You remember you’d been talking about how easy it would be
to get into Whistlefield, that very night, in the museum. Then I had
an idea. I took away the ladder as quietly as I could. That would
prevent them getting out of the window again, you see? And then I went
off back to the front door, let myself in, and roused Stenness and
young Torrance. I was very nervous, you understand. Anyone might be,
after getting a surprise like that.”
He took a fresh cigarette and lighted it with care. As he was about to
continue his narrative, Sir Clinton arrested him and turned to
Stenness.
“Perhaps you could give us your experiences, Mr. Stenness.”
“I’d gone to bed at the usual time, and fell asleep. I was waked up by
someone knocking at my door; and when I got up I found it was Mr.
Shandon. He said there were burglars in the room that Mr. Neville
Shandon’s body was lying in. Mr. Shandon had on a cap and a light
overcoat. As soon as he had waked me, he went off to wake Mr.
Torrance. I looked at my watch. It was 2.35 a.m. I picked up the poker
from my fireside and went out of my room. Mr. Torrance was there, too,
by that time. I suggested that he had better get a poker as well, or
else go down to the gun-room and get something better. He got a poker.
Then all three of us went to Neville Shandon’s room. The door was
locked; but we burst it in without making much of a noise. It’s an old
door, and the lock fitted very poorly. There was no light on in the
room when I got to it.”
“I’m almost sure, now I think over it, that there wasn’t any light at
the window,” Ernest began again. “I couldn’t have helped seeing it,
could I? Of course, all the rest of the house was dark, so if that
window was dark it wouldn’t catch my eye and I wouldn’t remember about
it. But if it had been lit up, I’d have noticed it at once.”
Stenness took no notice of the interruption.
“Somebody had evidently been in the room. Everything was upside down.
All the drawers had been ransacked and their contents had been thrown
about. Neville Shandon’s attaché case had been treated in the same
way. The whole place was in confusion.”
“Did you make out what the thieves had been searching for?”
“Well, his writing-case had been torn open and most of the contents
had been strewn about the floor. They’d been in a great hurry over
their work. And his pocket-book was pitched over into one corner of
the room as if someone had been through the contents and had chucked
it away.”
“What about money? His note-case was lying on the dressing-table. I
put it there myself when I searched his body yesterday.”
“Some notes were lying on the floor amongst the rest of the stuff. I
didn’t count them. In fact I didn’t touch anything. I thought you’d
better see things as they were.”
“The window was still open?”
“Yes.”
“It looks as though the burglar (or burglars) had got away before Mr.
Shandon saw the ladder, then. They’d cleared out and left the ladder
in position. What about the key of the door?”
“It hasn’t turned up.”
“And what happened after that? Why didn’t you ring up the police at
once?”
Stenness suppressed a sardonic smile with evident difficulty.
“Mr. Shandon was to look after that part. I went back to my room, put
on some clothes, and kept myself awake by reading till the morning. We
hadn’t roused the rest of the people in the house.”
Sir Clinton turned to Ernest.
“Couldn’t you get through to the police-station, Mr. Shandon? I must
see about this. It’s a serious matter for my subordinates.”
Ernest seemed completely taken aback by this view of the question.
“Well, Sir Clinton, I suppose I ought to have rung up the police; but
it was very late, you know. I was awfully sleepy; and as I was walking
along, I turned into my own bedroom. I was very shaken up by the whole
affair. It hasn’t happened to me before, you see. And somehow, I must
have begun to undress quite without thinking about it—you know how one
does things unconsciously . . .”
Then, with disarming frankness, he admitted the truth:
“I went to bed. And after a minute or two, I remembered I ought to
have rung up the police. But that would have meant getting out of bed
again and putting on some clothes to go down to the ’phone. It would
have been a lot of trouble. And it didn’t seem to me that it mattered
very much really. So while I was thinking about it, I fell asleep. But
I rang you up as soon as I got up this morning.”
Sir Clinton made no comment on Ernest’s methods. He had got all the
information he needed apparently, for now he turned to Stenness and
suggested that they should go upstairs and look at the scene of the
burglary.
Neville Shandon’s room bore out Stenness’s description of it.
Everything seemed to have been turned over and left higgledy-piggledy.
The floor was littered with a confused mass of clothes, papers,
contents of drawers, and other things. It seemed as though the whole
place had been searched in frantic haste for some object or other; but
whether the seeker had succeeded or not was apparently an insoluble
problem.
Sir Clinton stepped over to the still open window and examined the
sill.
“The marks of the ladder-ends are there, clear enough,” he pointed out
to Wendover, “and there’s the ladder itself down on the ground.”
He beckoned Stenness to his side.
“One of your own ladders, I suppose?”
Stenness examined it.
“Yes, I happen to recognise it. The gardeners use it, and it’s kept
somewhere about the place.”
“Some soil on the window-sill,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “They must
have picked it up on their boots from the flower-bed where the end of
the ladder rests.”
“There’s some on the floor here, as well,” Stenness pointed out.
“So I see,” Sir Clinton confirmed, “but that might have been brought
up by Mr. Shandon when you and he came in here. One can’t attach much
importance to it.”
He said nothing more, and contented himself with a careful inspection
of the room.
“I think I’ve seen all I want to see,” he said at last. “By the way,
you haven’t a key of the Maze, have you? I noticed the iron gates at
each entrance had locks on them. I want to go down there now and look
round.”
“I can get you a key, I think,” Stenness said, doubtfully, “but the
place is always left open. It’s never been locked at any time, to my
knowledge.”
“Oh, that’s all right then,” Sir Clinton hastened to say. “Now,
Wendover, I think we’ll be getting along.”
A thought seemed to strike him at the last moment.
“If you’re afraid of being worried by any more burglars, Mr. Shandon,
I’ll detach a couple of constables to look after Whistlefield. But I
really don’t think it’s the least likely that you’ll have any further
attempts of the sort. They seem to have made a thorough business of
this one, to judge by the state they left the place in.”
Ernest seemed rather shamefaced at the Chief Constable’s proposal.
Quite obviously he recognised that he had not shone as a hero in the
business of the night.
“No,” he replied, “I don’t think we need them, Sir Clinton. I think
we’ll manage without them, really. Of course, one feels a little
nervous. I think it’s quite understandable, when things have been
happening all together like this. But still, I don’t think we really
need a guard. If you think it’s not likely to happen again, I’m quite
ready to take your view of it, quite ready, I assure you. As you say,
there’s no reason why they should come back at all. They must have got
what they wanted. They’re sure to have got it, I think. No, they’re
hardly likely to come back again.”
As they made their way downstairs Sylvia Hawkhurst met them.
“I’ve been looking for you, Sir Clinton. Guess what you left behind
you last night.”
Sir Clinton shook his head doubtfully.
“I never succeed in these guessing competitions, Miss Hawkhurst. What
was it?”
“The box of darts! You put it down on the mantlepiece of the museum;
and I happened to notice it this morning when I went in.”
Sir Clinton’s face betrayed his annoyance at his blunder. It was so
obvious that no one cared to say anything on the subject.
“I’ll get it for you in a moment,” Sylvia said, as she hurried off.
Stenness looked at the Chief Constable, and it seemed as if his
estimate of Sir Clinton was undergoing revision. Wendover was
completely taken aback by the turn of events.
“Here it is,” Sylvia said, as she came back to them again. “It was
just where you left it. You’d better count the darts to make sure I
haven’t lost any—though I haven’t opened the box at all. I was too
much afraid of them.”
Sir Clinton obeyed and found the total correct. He shut the box
carefully and stowed it away in his pocket.
“Thanks, Miss Hawkhurst. It was very careless of me. But there’s no
harm done, since you’ve taken care of them for me.”
And after a few words about the affairs of the night, he took his
leave.
“Take the road to the East Gate, Squire,” he requested, as Wendover
let in the clutch.
“_You_’re a bright detective,” his friend retorted scornfully. “Here
you’ve been racing and chasing to cut off a possible source of curare;
and in the middle of the job you leave a whole tin of lethal darts
lying about for Tom, Dick or Harry to pick up. The limit, I’d call
it!”
“It was very careless,” Sir Clinton admitted, biting his lip.
“Careless!” Wendover echoed, contemptuously. “I can’t think how you
managed to do it. My godfathers! Leaving stuff like that on a
mantelpiece!”
Sir Clinton flushed.
“Look here, Squire, I can say ‘You’re a damned fool,’ just as often as
I need to hear it just now, without your help. You can’t guess how I
feel about it. Don’t rub it in, there’s a good chap.”
Wendover had never seen his friend so disturbed before. He stopped his
denunciations at once. In a few moments they reached the Maze, and
both left the car. Sir Clinton led the way to the entrance through
which they had gone on the previous afternoon.
“I’d better take the lead,” said Wendover. “I know the Maze and you
don’t. Just follow me.”
Sir Clinton paid no attention but kept in front. To Wendover’s
surprise he showed no hesitation, but threaded his way through the
labyrinth without difficulty. When he reached the centre he turned to
his companion.
“That’s merely to show you that anyone can find their way through here
if they keep their heads. I memorised the thing as Stenness was
guiding us yesterday—first right, third left, and so on. So you see
the murderer could have got up it easily enough if he had someone to
show him the ropes at the start.”
He glanced into the centre and then passed round to the position of
the loophole in the outer hedge. As he did so he gave an exclamation
of disgust and passed his hand over his face.
“Ugh! Spider’s web got across my mouth! There’s any amount of gossamer
about here. These hedges must be full of spiders. Beastly things!”
Coming to the loophole, he examined it carefully as though to discover
the range of view from it. Then he made his way to the loophole
commanding the second centre, which he inspected with equal interest.
“Now we’ll go outside and have another look at the track my dog picked
up,” he announced, curtly.
Wendover followed him once more, and they emerged from the entrance
near the river. Sir Clinton walked over to the tree to which the dog
had led them; and then, using the scraps of paper scattered on the
previous day as his guide, he crossed the grass. Once on the road, he
stopped and turned to Wendover. He seemed to be still smarting under
the annoyance of his blunder with the darts.
“That’s the murderer’s route, you see? He came out of the Maze
obviously. Then he climbed that tree, I think you said. No doubt he
was well out of danger there. No one would think of looking for him up
amongst the leaves. And after that he came over here, got into his
private aeroplane, and flew off—since the trail stops short.”
He glanced up and down the road.
“Just the one place where he could have done it, notice. This bit of
the road is concealed from nearly every direction by these banks of
rhododendrons round about.”
Wendover took no notice of the irony. He sympathised with Sir
Clinton’s feelings; it required no great stretch of imagination to
appreciate how a man would feel after making a mistake like that. They
walked over to the car and took the road to the East Gate.
As he drove, Wendover began to fit together the new facts in the
Whistlefield case. The more he recalled the state of Neville Shandon’s
room, the more obvious it grew that the burglar had been searching for
a document of some sort. This linked itself in his mind with the torn
fragment of Neville’s notes which had been found in his hand after
death. And Roger’s room had not been burgled.
“It looks like Hackleton at work,” he uttered, half-unconsciously.
Sir Clinton seemed to come out of a savage reverie at the words.
“Hackleton? Oh, you mean the burglary? It fits neatly in, doesn’t it?”
Then, in a more friendly voice than he had used since the dart
incident:
“I’m sorry if I rubbed you on the raw, Squire. But you know how I hate
to look like a fool; and that’s exactly what I do look like just now.”
Wendover was eager to accept the advance. He had no desire to irritate
his friend. After all, everyone makes mistakes sooner or later. But as
they fell into talk again a fresh idea shot through his mind; and this
time he did not utter it aloud:
“Clinton hustled me off early to bed last night. He was
washed-out-looking this morning. He hinted he’d done something or
other that was risky. What if he was the burglar himself?”
But though he puzzled over this view of the case, it yielded very
little help to him. At last he put it to the back of his mind, ready
for future reference if needed.
Sir Clinton had one further surprise for him as they reached the
Grange:
“Would you mind, Squire, if somebody brings a glass of boiling water,
some vinegar, and some washing soda to my room as soon as possible?
I’d like to have them now.”